“Who knows what’s really in our food, these days?
“Like our delightful little friend from the CIA, I disapproved, so I blew up the factory and killed everyone involved. Very definitely involving my new best friends, who were far too blasé about what they were planning. A shame, but you can’t make an omelette without bashing in the heads of a whole bunch of eggs. I made it look like an accident from which I barely escaped with my life. And with just enough computer files to convince my superiors that there was nothing worth following up. Shame, really. I was in for a really big bonus if I’d brought home the goods.”
“Would I be right in assuming that not everyone who worked in that factory knew what was going on?” said the Blue Fairy. “That there were in fact quite a few innocent and entirely human workers there when you blew up the factory?”
Peter shrugged. “I try not to think about that too much. This is a human world, and I intend for it to stay that way.”
“Well,” said the Blue Fairy after a pause. “It seems there’s no doubt you really are Alexander King’s grandson. My turn now, I think.”
“Nothing so everyday as factories or big business or unnatural working practices. You think so small, people. The world is a bigger place than you imagine; bigger than you can imagine. It contains wonders and marvels, monsters and terrors. Back in the day, when I was young and virile and a major player in my own right, I was . . . well, hired isn’t quite the right word. More properly, I was press-ganged by the Droods into cleaning up a particularly awkward problem that they preferred to handle at a safe and very deniable distance. Just in case it all went horribly wrong.
“You’ve seen the stories in the news about the occasional whale who becomes confused, gets lost, and ends up swimming along the River Thames, right into the heart of London? Of course you have. Well, something much larger and decidedly less kiddie friendly was making a nuisance of itself in the Thames. To be exact, a kraken had risen up from the depths, taken a wrong turn, and was threatening to block the Thames with its massive bulk and disturbingly long tentacles. Big things, kraken. Also very dim and even harder to argue with. Especially when you’re trying to hide the bloody thing from public gaze.
“There wasn’t a hope in hell of persuading it to turn around and go back, and there wasn’t time to come up with an elegant or even particularly nice solution. So I used the Hiring Hall to call together every ghoul operating in and around London, provided them all with knives and forks, and told them to get stuck in. All the sushi you can eat, provided you eat every last bit of it.
“And they did. Ghouls will eat anything.”
“I may never eat calamari again,” said Walker. He didn’t look especially disturbed, but then he never did. “My turn, I believe. A tale of the Nightside, then, where it’s always dark. Always three o’clock in the morning, and the hour that tries men’s souls. Except . . . someone wanted to change all that. There’s always someone planning to smuggle sunlight into the Nightside; usually one of the more extreme religious groups who believe evil can only flourish in the dark. Idiots. There’s nothing darker than the deepest recesses of the human heart.
“Apparently this particular group believed that if only bright healthy sunshine could be hauled into the Nightside, by brute force if necessary, then suddenly everyone there would have an abrupt change of heart and start playing nicely together. Save me from well-meaning idealists; they do more harm than all the monsters . . .
“Anyway, my illustrious lords and masters the Authorities very definitely preferred the Nightside the way it was, turning out a regular profit for them. So I was very firmly instructed to put a stop to this nefarious scheme by any and all means necessary. Didn’t take me long to track down the man funding the operation. People are always ready to tell me things when I ask in just the right tone of voice. The instigator of this illuminating scheme turned out to be a failed businessman, failed politician, failed . . . well, everything, really. But still convinced that he had a destiny and a right to change the world for the better, according to his beliefs.
“He found religion in jail, and once he was out found a whole bunch of followers, as his kind usually does. Somehow he got his hands on a grimoire, Quite Appallingly Powerful Spells for Dummies, and somehow again managed to smuggle it into the Nightside. Which is not unlike a terrorist smuggling a backpack nuke into an armoury. Actually, I think I would have preferred a backpack nuke. I know how to deal with those.
“I found the man and his nasty little book easily enough, because that’s what I do. Or rather, that’s what I’ve trained my people to do for me. I’ve always believed in delegating the hard work, and then strolling on stage at the end to take all the bows. I confronted the troublemaker in what he thought was his secret lair and did my best to explain to him why what he was planning was in fact a Very Bad Thing and wouldn’t achieve what he wanted anyway, but he wouldn’t listen. People who hear strong inner voices telling them to Do Good very rarely listen to anyone else. Because if their inner voices could be argued with and proved wrong, well, then they wouldn’t be special anymore, would they? You’ll have to kill me to stop me, he said with just a little bit of froth at the corners of his mouth. And I don’t think you’ve got it in you to kill a good man in cold blood; a man who’s only doing what is right.
“He was wrong, of course. I know my duty. I did what was necessary, and he died with a rather surprised look on his face. He really should have known better. You don’t get to lay down the law in a place like the Nightside unless you’re prepared to be even colder and more focused than anyone else in that corrupt place.”
All of us looked at Walker, and he looked calmly back. It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.
“Well,” I said, and everyone turned to look at me. “My turn. A tale of the Droods. And the messes we have to clean up.”
“A few years back, I was called in to investigate a strange collection of murders in one of the most quiet and law-abiding suburbs of London. Strange, in that although the same person was identified as the killer in each of the seven cases, that individual always had an unbreakable alibi for each and every killing. At the exact time the victims were dying horribly, the woman identified by dozens of witnesses as the killer was out in public somewhere else, surrounded by friends and caught very clearly on surveillance cameras. Even though there was all kinds of forensic evidence linking the woman to the murders, there was no way in hell she could have done it. Unless she was twins. Which she wasn’t. First thing I checked.
“The police couldn’t do a thing. So I took over.
“I learned all there was to know; read all the files, checked all the evidence, ruled out clones . . . and then watched the woman from a safe distance, steeping myself in her boring, suburban, everyday life. A quiet, reserved lady of a certain age, with a nice house and a nice life and not an enemy in the world. One ex-husband, with whom she got on fine. No children. A boring but worthy job, and no hidden life at all. No dark secrets, and certainly no reason to savagely kill and dismember seven people. The only odd thing in her file, so mild it hardly qualified as odd, was that for a short period earlier that year, she’d attended meditation classes.
“When I looked into that, I finally turned up something interesting which wasn’t in the files. She’d left the meditation group because it wasn’t doing anything for her, but she moved on from one group to another, searching for . . . something. And ended up as part of a very quiet, very under-the-radar . . . really quite extreme group that specialised in exploring the deepest, darkest recesses of the human mind. Extreme beliefs, extreme practices, and just occasionally . . . extreme results. God alone knows how such a quiet little soul ended up in that group. Maybe someone thought it was funny.
“If so, the joke was on them, because my timid little miss took to these new disciplines like a duck to water. At first, it was hard to get anyone in the group to talk to me, but it’s amazing how persuasive I can be when I’ve someone by the bal
ls with an armoured hand. Turned out the group threw her out because they were scared of her. Scared of what she was achieving. She’d gone deeper into her mind than any of the others had managed. And when she came back . . . she brought something with her.
“Do I really need to tell you that all the murder victims had been members of the group?
“I confronted the woman in her nice little house. Showed her my armour, calmed her down, and explained who and what I was. Told her that I was there to help her if I could. But she had to be honest with me. She burst into tears then, but they were tears of relief. It might have been my reassuring manner or my impressive armour, but I think she’d been desperate to tell someone. Someone who’d believe her.
“The group she’d worked with had been all about identifying and confronting one’s own inner demons so they could be controlled or exorcised. But something went wrong. She went deep into her mind, into the dark places most of us don’t even want to admit exist, and came face-to-face with all the foul, selfish impulses of the id: all the monsters of the mind. She brought them up into the light and expelled them from her, horrified that someone as nice as her could have such terrible things within her. But once freed from the confines of her mind, the expelled darkness took on shape and form in the material world.
“Her shape and form.
“It’s called a tulpa. A spirit made flesh, a doppelgänger that embraces all the impulses we normally control. And this tulpa went out into the city to happily do all the appalling things the woman had ever dreamed of but would never have admitted even to herself. Avenging every slight, every perceived fault, and indulging its endless appetite for blood and slaughter.
“I called in a few favours, mastered a few new tricks, and tracked the tulpa half across London and back. It ran before me, spitting and cursing, lashing out at anyone who got in its way. But I was always right there on its trail, closing in all the time, preventing it from doing any real damage or horror, and finally it did the only thing it could. It went home. I crashed through the front door of the nice little house only minutes behind it and found the woman standing over the tulpa’s unconscious body. She’d hit it over the head with a vase of flowers.
“They really did look exactly the same. The woman came to me and nestled into my arms, sobbing like a small child, desperate for me to tell her that the horror was finally over. Except it couldn’t be as long as the tulpa existed. It had to die. The woman didn’t protest. But . . . she couldn’t do it herself. Not to something that looked so like her. She begged me to do it for her. Kill the tulpa and set her free, at last.
“She really was very good. She would have fooled anyone else. But you can’t work in this business for as long as I have and not be able to tell the difference between a human being and a spirit form. The woman was unconscious on the floor; the thing with the tearstained face looking up at me so beseechingly was the tulpa. Begging me to kill its original, so it could run free at last.
“I killed the woman. Because I knew the one thing the tulpa didn’t. Once freed, there was no way of putting a tulpa back into its host. It would just go on, killing and killing forever, until it was stopped in the only way a tulpa can be stopped. By destroying the host that birthed it.
“I killed the woman quickly and efficiently. She never woke up. And the tulpa faded away into nothing, screaming its rage to the last. I like to think of myself as an agent, not an assassin. But sometimes, that’s the job.”
When I finished, they were all looking at me in a new way. I wasn’t sure I liked it. But I’d told that particular story for a reason. They needed to understand what I would do if I had to.
“Well, Eddie,” said the Blue Fairy. “That was pretty . . . hardcore. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Of course he does,” said Walker. “He’s a Drood.”
“You did what you had to,” said Honey. “Like you said, it’s the job.”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Stories like that are why I decided to specialise in industrial espionage,” said Peter.
We sat around the campfire, staring into the flames rather than look at each other. The storytelling hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped, and I wasn’t sure what I’d learned from them. That we were all hard, focused professionals, quite capable of making harsh necessary decisions when we had to? That we were all potential killers? That any one of us was capable of stabbing any other in the back to be sure of getting Alexander King’s prize? I already knew that. I was a little relieved that all the stories had demonstrated a certain amount of moral responsibility. Or at least an awareness of it.
Least of all Peter’s, surprisingly enough. Though maybe that was just big business for you.
“You know,” the Blue Fairy said suddenly, “even though we all work, or have worked, for different masters . . . we all operate in the same greater, magical world. Maybe that’s why Alexander King chose us rather than . . . better-known names. It’s not even as though we’re complete strangers to each other. I know you, Eddie, and I even worked with Walker once, on that Heir to the Throne business.”
“Which you took a very solemn oath not to discuss with anyone,” Walker said coldly.
“I’m not discussing it! I’m just mentioning it to make a point! Do you know anyone here, Walker?”
“I know Honey Lake,” he said, just a bit surprisingly.
“What was the CIA doing in the Nightside?” I said.
“Meddling,” said Walker.
“Nothing that need concern the Droods,” Honey said quickly.
We all looked at Peter, but he just shrugged. “I’ve heard of the CIA, and the Droods, and the Nightside, but that’s about it. I never needed or wanted to be part of your greater, magical world, Blue. I wanted a life as far from Grandfather’s as possible. But . . . he was a spy, and I’m a spy. Maybe it is in the blood.” He looked around the fire, studying all of us thoughtfully. “Why did you become spies? Or agents, if you prefer?”
“For me, it was the family business,” I said. “I was filled full of duty and responsibility from my school days on. Indoctrination starts early in the Droods. I was raised to fight the good fight, to be a soldier in a war with no end. There were many ways you could choose to serve humanity, but doing anything outside the family was never an option. I found a way to leave the Hall and be a fairly independent field agent, but I never left the family. I am a Drood, for all my many sins, and always will be. We exist to protect humanity, and once you find out just how many things it needs protecting from that the rest of you couldn’t hope to cope with . . . it’s hard to turn your back on it.”
“Yes,” said Walker. “Duty and responsibility. Stern taskmasters, but not without their rewards. Someone has to stand their ground against all the forces that would drag the world down. Someone has to crack the whip and keep the lid on things. And I’ve always been very good at that.”
“I wouldn’t know duty and responsibility if I fell over them in the gutter,” said the Blue Fairy. “I play the game for thrills and money and any pretty young things I might encounter along the way. I am an agent for the sheer damned glamour of it. Once you discover just how big and marvellous and strange the world really is, how could you not want to wade in it up to your hips?”
“For me it has always been about serving my country,” Honey said firmly. “Doing the dirty, necessary jobs because someone has to.”
“Money,” Peter said flatly. “For me it’s always been show me the money. I take a certain pride in my successes, in a job well done, but if I could find anything that paid better I’d change occupations so fast it would make your head spin. There’s no glamour in industrial espionage, no good guys or bad guys. Just varying amounts of greed, deceit, and betrayal.”
There didn’t seem much to say about that, so I turned to the Blue Fairy. “When you were a major player, who did you work for, apart from my family?”
He shrugged. “Anyone who could meet my price or had an intriguing case. I alwa
ys was a sucker for a pretty face with a sob story . . . I was a regular at the Hiring Hall for many years. Had my own stall for a while. Go anywhere, do anyone . . . But nothing lasts, particularly not in this business. Soon enough they want to be rescued by a younger agent with less mileage on the clock; someone whose glamour isn’t quite so faded.”
And then he broke off and sat up straight. He cocked his head slightly to one side, as though listening to something only he could hear.
“It’s out there,” the Blue Fairy said quietly. “In the dark. Watching us.”
We all looked around us, trying not to be too obvious about it, but the dark held its secrets to itself. But gradually, bit by bit, the shrieking and shouting from the local wildlife died away, birds and beasts going to ground in the presence of something more dangerous than themselves. The night seemed suddenly larger and more threatening. A tense, brittle silence, as though everything in the world was holding its breath to see what would happen next. The only sound left was the quiet crackling of the fire. Almost without realising it, the five of us stood up and formed a circle around the fire, standing shoulder to shoulder staring out into the night so nothing could come at us undetected. The Blue Fairy stood to my left, almost quivering with eagerness.
“Are you sure about this?” said Peter. “I can’t see a damned thing.”
“Oh, sure,” said Honey. “The whole forest has fallen quiet just because it can’t wait to hear your next story.”
The Spy Who Haunted Me sh-3 Page 18
